For those people who claim that evolutionary psychology isn’t predictive:
These data show that children living with one genetic parent and one stepparent are roughly forty times more likely to be physically abused than children living with both parents.This greater risk rate occurs even when other factors such as poverty and socioeconomic status are controlled. Daly and Wilson concluded that “step-parenthood per se remains the single most powerful risk factor for child abuse that has yet been identified”.… Some people, of course, might claim that such findings are “obvious” or that “anyone could have predicted them.” Perhaps so. But the fact remains that hundreds of previous studies of child abuse failed to identify step-parents as a risk factor for child abuse until Daly and Wilson approached the problem with an evolutionary lens.
Buss (2008). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. 7. 211-12
And of course, there are many similar examples throughout the book. I literally just opened it to a random page, and found that example.
At some point, the refrain of “Non-predictive! Just-so story! It’s a pseudoscience!” starts to look like motivated cognition.
Buller claims that the statistics come from police reports and that the police had previously been trained to look for stepparents as a source of child abuse. If so, 1 this was well known by nonpsychologists and 2 the magnitude of the effect may be overstated. Is there a problem with this critique?
For 1, how is that a even critique? Is it possible for psychologists to have failed to understand something that cops understood? It doesn’t even seem surprising that police, who have generations of practical experience dealing with abuse would notice the trend before ivory-tower academics.
As for 2, I don’t think that suggests the effect is overstated, except maybe very weakly. The effect is so huge that it’s hard to believe that police suspicion of step-parents can “explain it away”.
hundreds of previous studies of child abuse failed to identify step-parents as a risk factor for child abuse
Here’s a case of confusion. Isn’t this conjecture obvious? Cinderella? Beaten like a red headed stepchild?
I’ll take it as more likely that an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious, than an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious because of his evo psych theory.
Some lazy googling indicates the phrase “beaten like a red-headed stepchild” was raised to contemporary popular consciousness in 1986′s “The wrath”, years after Daly and Wilson. Originally it was racist, specifically referring to the way one might treat the result of a wife’s earlier dalliances with Irish immigrants.
I’m not sure I trust my intuitions about what an average high school dropout could tell me in the 1970′s. But I consider it significant that professionals looked into this question, and did not notice that factor previously, an unlikely result if it was both widely known and actually present.
I suspect this may be a case of the professionals not wanting to notice because they didn’t want to seem politically incorrect.
I think you’re right. It is usually best to conform and be politically correct in most cases, biding time until there is a specific issue on which you can make a stand with an expectation of significant benefit to yourself or your objectives. Choosing a battle.
I’ll take it as more likely that an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious, than an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious because of his evo psych theory.
But I reject (what seems to be) the intended connotation—that having an evo psych theory would not have a dramatic influence on the probability that a prominent researcher would point out this particular instance of the obvious.
It may be useful to focus on the ‘pointed out’ part. Even allowing that a fact is ‘obvious’ enough that it occurs to everyone, when it comes to pointing things out—particularly in the form of presenting it in a formal research context—incentive matters.
Most people who have proven their ability to gain academic credibility are wise enough to not go around making controversial claims unless they have a personal stake in it. Their intellectual territory must somehow be expanded by the pronouncement. An evo psych researcher potentially gains status by showing a new area where his theory can claim authority.
A non-evo psych researcher is less likely to gain from spouting step-parent risk factors. He or she may even benefit from rejecting the step-parent influence in order to support an entirely situational based model of social behaviour. Whatever it takes to make the situation look more like the kind of ‘nail’ that their clique’s ‘hammer’ is built to handle.
I rather agree with you fully, but you are elaborating ‘because of his evo psych theory’ differently than I intended. The OP’s point appears to be that no one [or at least expert] was aware of the connection, until evo psych created a framework that generated a prediction along those lines, that then allowed people to begin focusing on that connection. That’s the sense I used.
Your political story, along the lines of gravestone to gravestone, I find reasonable and likely.
For those people who claim that evolutionary psychology isn’t predictive:
Buss (2008). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. 7. 211-12
And of course, there are many similar examples throughout the book. I literally just opened it to a random page, and found that example.
At some point, the refrain of “Non-predictive! Just-so story! It’s a pseudoscience!” starts to look like motivated cognition.
Buller claims that the statistics come from police reports and that the police had previously been trained to look for stepparents as a source of child abuse. If so, 1 this was well known by nonpsychologists and 2 the magnitude of the effect may be overstated. Is there a problem with this critique?
For 1, how is that a even critique? Is it possible for psychologists to have failed to understand something that cops understood? It doesn’t even seem surprising that police, who have generations of practical experience dealing with abuse would notice the trend before ivory-tower academics.
As for 2, I don’t think that suggests the effect is overstated, except maybe very weakly. The effect is so huge that it’s hard to believe that police suspicion of step-parents can “explain it away”.
Here’s a case of confusion. Isn’t this conjecture obvious? Cinderella? Beaten like a red headed stepchild?
I’ll take it as more likely that an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious, than an evo psych researcher pointed out the obvious because of his evo psych theory.
Some lazy googling indicates the phrase “beaten like a red-headed stepchild” was raised to contemporary popular consciousness in 1986′s “The wrath”, years after Daly and Wilson. Originally it was racist, specifically referring to the way one might treat the result of a wife’s earlier dalliances with Irish immigrants.
I’m not sure I trust my intuitions about what an average high school dropout could tell me in the 1970′s. But I consider it significant that professionals looked into this question, and did not notice that factor previously, an unlikely result if it was both widely known and actually present.
I suspect this may be a case of the professionals not wanting to notice because they didn’t want to seem politically incorrect.
The time prior to the Daly and Wilson paper (1980) included a lot of time when modern notions of political correctness were not operative.
I think you’re right. It is usually best to conform and be politically correct in most cases, biding time until there is a specific issue on which you can make a stand with an expectation of significant benefit to yourself or your objectives. Choosing a battle.
One would hope so!
But I reject (what seems to be) the intended connotation—that having an evo psych theory would not have a dramatic influence on the probability that a prominent researcher would point out this particular instance of the obvious.
It may be useful to focus on the ‘pointed out’ part. Even allowing that a fact is ‘obvious’ enough that it occurs to everyone, when it comes to pointing things out—particularly in the form of presenting it in a formal research context—incentive matters.
Most people who have proven their ability to gain academic credibility are wise enough to not go around making controversial claims unless they have a personal stake in it. Their intellectual territory must somehow be expanded by the pronouncement. An evo psych researcher potentially gains status by showing a new area where his theory can claim authority.
A non-evo psych researcher is less likely to gain from spouting step-parent risk factors. He or she may even benefit from rejecting the step-parent influence in order to support an entirely situational based model of social behaviour. Whatever it takes to make the situation look more like the kind of ‘nail’ that their clique’s ‘hammer’ is built to handle.
I rather agree with you fully, but you are elaborating ‘because of his evo psych theory’ differently than I intended. The OP’s point appears to be that no one [or at least expert] was aware of the connection, until evo psych created a framework that generated a prediction along those lines, that then allowed people to begin focusing on that connection. That’s the sense I used.
Your political story, along the lines of gravestone to gravestone, I find reasonable and likely.